


Confirmation Bias

by Phritzie



Series: The Woman Dies [2]
Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol, Felix Belongs to the GILF Fan Club, Lying for Fun and Profit, Microaggressions: Negging Edition, Other, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:42:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26478154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phritzie/pseuds/Phritzie
Summary: Two vignette-length codas to the second chapter of A Goal Without A Plan.
Series: The Woman Dies [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516679
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. Taurus

The pier wasn’t safe on a moonless night, its organization too maze-like and dark. Other than the prison lighthouse, which swept quietly across the lagoon and shrunk her pupils, only a few lampposts guttered and hissed along the winding landscape of the eastern docking block. Seaworthy vessels alternately cast or obscured walking light. Felix didn’t expect galleon-class trawlers to be well-lit in the off-season, and largely they weren't. That left the two of them the mooring trunks, fat and wooden, to mark where deep lanes of water began — yawning gaps between the smaller boats and smacks that could be treacherously cold even in summertime. 

A touch of peril was worth their destination. He’d berthed his ships close to the town’s border, a long jetty of rock with no beacon. There were a trio of them, main sails one burnt hue and hulls in a row, making the same slow climbs and falls through the spindrift.

He dragged a frameless cot above deck. Felix stared over the edge into the black soup of the bay, bull kelps bobbing in the foam like buoys. He dug into the craft’s belly, coaxed some dead coals to come alive, poured them popping and spitting into pans. Felix silently debated the destiny of the rum. He turned his lamps down low — eased the peg off his stump. Felix decided they’d drank enough. She convinced him to share his whalehide coat. They got into bed carefully, a sleeve apiece.

It seemed like nothing would or could happen. He was older than her by a fair margin. Either unlucky or some kind of war hero, or both, or neither. Felix didn’t like to play cruel games. 

But apparently, he did.

“I think I see it there.” With effort, Felix unearthed the hand between them and pointed it at the vastness above. "Blimey, yeah." Shifted closer with her head. “It's very orange.”

“Good—Now, follow your finger.” He guided her by the elbow. “There’s one six degrees higher, and another below.”

She squinted, scanning loose sprays of white and yellow pinpricks, sailcloth, and the yardarm for the specific stars he wanted her to find. “Are those feet, or hands?”

A doomed smoker if she’d ever heard one, he laughed as hard as his body allowed, mule-kicking huffs that vibrated across the cot. “Feet, I suppose. They’re hooves.”

“You know what I meant.” Distracted by backtracking to where she thought that ruby stud of an eye was, Felix knocked his guiding hand askew with hers. She grabbed it sternly, squeezed, not in apology. “How long again?”

He enjoyed that — made no secret of it, accepting her clumsy invitation to pull their hands back under the warm leather with a smile. “Four, five weeks at the most.” 

_Found you._ Aldebaran winked gently. _Found me_. “Too bad. I would’ve shown off at drinks. I have to leave tomorrow.”

“They’ll be back before you know it." Felix figured that was the end of that until his cheek brushed the side of hers. There were private things in it; the scent of his balding hair, the leather musk strong at his pulse, the thin-feeling texture of his skin. Close-up he looked like her palms, nothing smooth about him. “And you’ll have the camansi to await until then.”

“Camansi?” Felix wondered, nose thoughtlessly seeking more of them.

“Yes, you know; rhimas jewel. Breadnut. Or do you have trouble finding it this far north?”

Felix thought about the exact nature of his question a while longer than she meant to. Long enough she almost missed the second question hidden in the first. 

It was uncommon for Asgarnians to clock her so blatantly. Rarer for them to sneak up on her with such intimate trivia. Rarest when her mind was already on intimate imperatives.

The water had gone quiet. Feeling rude, Felix cleared her throat of an adventurous bit of dinner and repeated his words to herself. 

“Never had it.” Loose rigging finally weighed in with a few creaking notes and its input felt judgemental. “I, uh. I don’t even really know what that is.”

It wasn’t strictly a lie. She’d never seen one outside of botanical illustrations. Had overheard the word spoken aloud, yes, in conjunction with others, and on each occasion by merchants that looked a lot like her. That didn’t like to look _at_ her after she’d opened her mouth. 

Felix had grown to expect the unknowable anywhere. That there were secret worlds she wasn’t permitted access to didn’t unsettle her much now. If it did, being locked out of a barter for southeastern produce by a language barrier didn’t. Being a moral affront to someone for no immediately obvious reasons didn’t.

The way he appraised her then, askance, did somewhat remind Felix of that strange disapproval, except it was missing the edge of mistrust she was used to. And she reminded herself he’d sunk a few, as had she, so the glow of heat in his eyes just felt like warmth to her.

“You aren’t alone,” he said at last, considering. “Knowing the stars is more important. Without them, many wouldn’t.” 

Together they looked at the bull again, just seven spots of light she could’ve gone her whole life ignoring. Gestalt, another secret. 

“The appearance of this one is how they know when to plant it. Many common scheduling minutiae that used to vex ancient agrarians were solved by tracking such creatures.”

Probably because she was drunk, Felix found his neat, factoidal-sounding segue utterly fascinating. It figured that some old lush would be the one to offer her a diverting conversation. Maybe she _didn’t_ owe Burt a shiner.

It took her a solid minute of adjusting the coat to roll on her side and prop up her head without letting air underneath it. “Astronomical farmers,” she marveled. “Tell me more.”

His eyes glowed a little hotter. Felix swore she could really feel them on her skin, glimmering down like the stars, and supposed it must’ve been the coals by their feet. “Gladly.”


	2. Delta

Not going along with her hadn’t even occurred to him. 

Usually, when the path of fate veered this far from the familiar, and he was faced with the obligation to reorient it by force, Sliske did pretty well against himself. There would always be another opportunity to marshal an unraveling situation. This never didn’t happen; one or two exceptional instances in more than twelve thousand years worth of ingenuity proved that.

They ran afoul one of the people he’d seen sharing a smoke on their way out. Felix, naturally, had something to say, as if upon sensing his ballooning anxiety she’d deduced that the cure was to feed it. 

“Wydin go home yet?” _Ah._

“Tagged me in,” Gerrant said. What Felix made of this he didn’t know; her tiny groan signaled anything from sympathy to horror. “Who’s this?”

She looked down at him. Sliske realized that introductions were about to take place and faintly shook his head. 

“One of Bill’s,” Felix hedged, fjording her descent of the stoop. Under the guise of locating the sturdiest post in the fence trimming the inn and a dead-end alley, Sliske busied himself with changing his hobble to a more loping gait, because it looked about time to cut free.

“Wanna go home?”

Gerrant sighing in a curt burst of air very thinly beat out his rise to answer her. “You know I do.”

“We’ll guard the flagpole until he comes back.”

Sliske caught the tail end of a flippant-looking gesture as his eyes snapped up to see Felix making it, mouth quirking in that lopsided way of liars and consuls. It was, in hindsight, the second-most-emotive thing he’d seen her do all night, her earlier anger a thermal shock after watching her mope through hours of tepid chitchat. 

“We will?” he asked, on cue. Felix shot him a dirty look while Gerrant thanked and farewelled them, darting off down the road into town. 

Sliske waited until he was out of earshot to return it. “I respectfully decline.”

“I’m glad,” Felix said, gingerly crossing the courtyard to lean on his healthy bit of fence. “Because there is no fucking way Frank’s getting back tonight.”

He couldn’t begin to guess what that meant. “Who?”

Her eyes thinned, dimming toward the bottles in his arms. “Redbeard Frank.” Then they crinkled, soft and genuine, and for one lovely moment Felix seemed so pleased he thought she was going to laugh. “Um. Don’t quote me on that. I think he’s having an identity crisis.” His confusion must’ve telegraphed, because she groaned and tipped her head from side to side, like this was such a chore to divulge she had to limber up for it. “It doesn’t matter. They made a ridiculous agreement.”

Felix was almost through banishing a particularly pebbly crick from her neck when what she’d said occurred to him. “What kind of identity crisis?”

Pausing, head still askew, she chewed on her peeling bottom lip and made a dismissive noise. “The shaving your eponymous beard of ten years and running away to Ashdale kind.” 

A _great deal_ of self-restraint was spent not reacting to this information in ways that could be interpreted as odd. Like cursing.

They were back on track, or at least he was. Evidently, Felix had never strayed. Sliske had just chanced on a maddeningly obvious error when he’d assumed _Frank_ was a random drifter. 

That borrowing could plummet from risky to completely unsustainable in the length of a day twisted him with regret.

He’d have to be _original_. 

He’d have to start drafting _characters._

But then a rewarding curl of satisfaction wove through him, because work would never be so distasteful to him as failure. He hadn’t bombed: Sliske had set a benchmark with the longest role he’d dared to occupy months ago — another redhead, in fact. If he eliminated the factor of third party interference entirely, he might be able to fool her for years. 

Cheered by this grim assurance, he indulged in a celebratory swig of his spirits.

“It’s probably fine. I’d ask him, but we’re not exactly close,” Felix continued obliviously, trying to pick at a hangnail. “He gave me the runaround once. Hate that.” 

The rum found its way to his throat, but not his stomach. “Whoa, hey. Take it easy.”

“When the—young gods, were not yet babes,” Sliske said, barely coughing, “I had a goblet—in my hand.” 

The rest of her skin had already lost some of that hot, blotchy rash in the cold, but gratifyingly, his declaration was making her face darken with blood again. Felix gave his shoulder blades a dull thwack. “Should’ve told me this was a robbery.”

An experimental swallow fixed him. Grimacing, he wiped his mouth. “It’s worse than you think. I’m told I’ve aged gracefully.”

Taking in the weather-beaten canvas he’d found the good sense to reproduce from a settlement acquisition with Zemouregal, Felix hummed her skepticism. 

Part of sticking to the path included being able to take the clear victories and go before they soured. Sliske was less accomplished in that respect, when the thrills were in taking his prize home.

“Here.” Resigned, he prodded her side with the wax topper of the unopened rum. “Thank you for the delicate ejection. You may now wash your hands of me.” 

Felix seemed to consider the bottle and dismiss it in the same glance. “Actually.” How _one_ word could perk his ear. “I burned down my bed for the night. If you’ve got a spare, I’ll let you keep it.”

Real, perceived, or fabricated, there was nothing quite so motivating as a challenge. 

He picked a direction and began trudging alongside it with resolute swings of his peg. Tens of ships were in port, masts a veritable forest of opportunity.

If he absolutely couldn’t find an uninhabited vessel, Sliske knew about a dozen techniques for talking someone into such a snare that, when he was through, whoever fell victim would have trouble convincing themselves they hadn’t been robbing him instead.


End file.
